Smashing Statues
Book description
An urgent and fractious national debate over public monuments has erupted in America. Some people risk imprisonment to tear down long-ignored hunks of marble; others form armed patrols to defend them. Why do we care so much about statues? And who gets to decide which ones should stay up and…
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Why read it?
1 author picked Smashing Statues as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Iconoclasm isn’t new. The word means, literally, “image destroying.”
History is littered with instances going back to Antiquity. But something fresh is happening right now in the United States.
Smashing Monuments is a lively, bracing, much-needed account of the iconoclasm roiling contemporary America’s public landscape, particularly in the wake of the white supremacists’ murderous march in Charlottesville in 2017 and George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police in 2020.
Captivating reportage and historically informed analysis, from the unique perspective of a scholar of art history and law, propels our reconsideration of American public icons, their origins, their sometimes-sordid purposes, their standing,…
From Matthew's list on how and why U.S. monuments have become controversial.
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Grand Old Unraveling
It didn’t begin with Donald Trump. When the Republican Party lost five straight presidential elections during the 1930s and 1940s, three things happened: (1) Republicans came to believe that presidential elections are rigged; (2) Conspiracy theories arose and were believed; and (3) The presidency was elevated to cult-like status.
Long…
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